The General’s Caged Chef

Jinyan tastes the broth before she drinks it, and the cup is still warm when she realizes the general has locked the door herself. She is the court food specialist who kept three rulers alive by reading the royal kitchen like a battlefield, from the cook who salted too much to the bowl that should have smelled clean and did not. Wearing a man’s official robe has let her move where women cannot, but it has also made every choice sharper, because one wrong step can expose her and ruin the only power she has left. When Lu Shenzhou decides that she is too useful, too dangerous, and too close to the truth to let go, she becomes his political prisoner inside a palace that still remembers her knive...